JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE.
“The most perfect being who has ever trod the soil of this planet was called the Man of Sorrows.”
CHARLES DICKENS IN HIS WILL.
“I commit my soul to the mercy of God, through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and exhort my dear children humbly to try to guide themselves by the teachings of the New Testament.”
SHAKESPEARE IN HIS WILL.
“I commend my soul into the hands of God, my Creator, hoping and assuredly believing, through the only merits of Jesus Christ my Saviour, to be made partaker of life everlasting.”
LORD BYRON.
“If ever man was God, or God man, Jesus Christ was both.”
MATTHEW ARNOLD.
“To the Bible men will return because they cannot do without it. The true God is and must be pre-eminently the God of the Bible, the eternal who makes for righteousness, from whom Jesus came forth, and whose spirit governs the course of humanity.”
DIDEROT.
“No better lessons can I teach my child than those of the Bible.”
PROFESSOR HUXLEY.
“I have always been strongly in favor of secular education without theology, but I must confess that I have been no less seriously perplexed to know by what practical measures the religious feeling, which is the essential basis of moral conduct, is to be kept up in the present utterly chaotic state of opinion on these matters without the use of the Bible.”
JOHN STUART MILL.
“Who among His disciples, or among their proselytes, was capable of inventing the sayings of Jesus, or imagining the life and character ascribed to Him? Certainly not the fishermen of Galilee; as certainly not Saint Paul, whose character and idiosyncrasies were of a totally different sort; and still less the early Christian writers. When this pre-eminent genius is combined with the qualities of probably the greatest moral reformer and martyr to His mission who ever existed upon earth, religion cannot be said to have made a bad choice in pitching on this man as the ideal representative and guide of humanity; nor even now would it be easy, even for an unbeliever, to find a better translation of the rule of virtue from the abstract into the concrete, than to endeavor so to live that Christ would approve his life.”
ROUSSEAU.
“Can it be possible that the sacred personage whose history the Scriptures contain should be a mere man? Where is the man, where the philosopher, who could so live and so die without weakness and without ostentation? When Plato describes his imaginary righteous man, loaded with all the punishments of guilt, yet meriting the highest rewards of virtue, he exactly describes the character of Jesus Christ. What an infinite disproportion between the son of Sophroniscus and the Son of Mary. Socrates dies with honor, surrounded by his disciples listening to the most tender words - the easiest death that one could wish to die. Jesus dies in pain, dishonor, mockery, the object of universal cursing - the most horrible death that one could fear. At the receipt of the cup of poison, Socrates blesses him who could not give it to him without tears; Jesus, while suffering the sharpest pains, prays for His most bitter enemies. If Socrates lived and died like a philosopher, Jesus lived and died like a god.
“Peruse the books of philosophers with all their pomp of diction. How meager, how contemptible are they when compared with the Scriptures! The majesty of the Scriptures strikes me with admiration.”
PECAUT.
“Christ’s moral character rose beyond comparison above that of any other great man of antiquity. No one was ever so gentle, so humble, so kind as He. In His spirit He lived in the house of His heavenly Father. His moral life is wholly penetrated by God. He was the master of all, because He was really their brother.”
ERNEST RENAN.
“All history is incomprehensible without Him. He created the object and fixed the starting point of the future faith of humanity. He is the incomparable man to whom the universal conscience has decreed the title of Son of God, and that with justice. In the first rank of this grand family of the true sons of God we must place Jesus. The highest consciousness of God which ever existed in the breast of humanity was that of Jesus. Repose now in Thy glory, noble founder! Thy work is finished, Thy divinity established. Thou shalt become the corner-stone of humanity so entirely that to tear Thy name from this world would rend it to its foundations. Between Thee and God there will no longer be any distinction. Complete Conqueror of death, take possession of Thy kingdom, whither shall follow Thee, by the royal road which Thou hast traced, ages of adoring worshipers. Whatever may be the surprises of the future, Jesus will never be surpassed. His worship will grow young without ceasing; His legend will call forth tears without end; His sufferings will melt the noblest hearts; and all ages will proclaim that among the sons of men there is none born greater than Jesus. Even Paul is not Jesus. How far removed are we all from Thee, dear Master! Where is Thy mildness, Thy poetry? Thou to whom a flower didst bring pleasure and ecstasy, dost Thou recognize as Thy disciples these wranglers, these men furious over their prerogatives, and desiring that everything should be given to them? They are men; Thou art a god.”
BENJAMIN DISRAELI.
“The wildest dreams of their rabbis have been far exceeded. Has not Jesus conquered Europe and changed its name to Christendom? All countries that refuse the cross wither, and the time will come, when the vast communities and countless myriads of America and Australia, looking upon Europe as Europe now looks upon Greece, and wondering how so small a space could have achieved such great deeds, will find music in the songs of Zion and solace in the parables of Galilee.”
PROFESSOR HEGARD OF THE UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN.
“The experiences of life, its sufferings and grief, have shaken my soul and have broken the foundation upon which I formerly thought I could build. Full of faith in the sufficiency of science, I thought to have found in it a sure refuge from all the contingencies of life. This illusion is vanished; when the tempest came, which plunged me in sorrow, the moorings, the cable of science, broke like thread. Then I seized upon that help which many before me have laid hold of. I sought and found peace in God. Since then I have certainly not abandoned science, but I have assigned to it another place in my life.”
When a man of brains speaks well of the Bible and Christ he consciously or unconsciously bears tribute to the inspiration of the one and the deity of the other.
The Bible claims to be a revelation from God, and its character sustains its claim. “The Word of the Lord came expressly to Ezekiel.” (Ezek. 1:13.) “The Lord said unto me,” exclaimed Jeremiah. (Jer. 1:7.) “Hear the Word of the Lord,” says Isaiah. (Isa. 1:10.) “Thus saith the Lord,” rings through the Old Testament. And the New Testament puts the seal of inspiration upon the Old. “The Holy Ghost spake by the mouth of David.” (Acts 1:16.) “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God.” (2 Tim. 3:16.) “The prophecy came not in old time by the will of man, but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.” (2 Pet. 1:21.) If the men who wrote this Book were not inspired, they were liars, and we have to explain how the Book which contains the highest morality ever given to earth could be written by a set of liars. And these bad men at the same time wrote their own doom, for there is no vice more severely condemned in the Bible than deception. To claim that good men wrote the Bible, and deny its inspiration, is on a par with the claim that Christ was a good man, while He pretended to be what He was not.
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